EA interested in acquiring Crytek?

Only a week after Electronic Arts (EA) announced it had acquired SpellForce 2 developer Phenomic, there are hints to believe the company is now considering taking over Crytek, another German-based game development house.

Crytek is best known for developing the Crytek engine, and games based on it like the Far Cry series. Crytek is currently developing its next generation shooter called "Crysis" which was shown at this year's E3 conference, showing a very advanced graphics engine and promising gameplay and enemy AI.

According to article published in "Die Welt," EA's executive vice president and general manager of international publishing Gerhard Florin described Crytek as a "very, very interesting candidate" for an acquisition. Faruk Yerli, co-founder of the Frankfurt, Germany, based game studio, confirmed related conversations with EA to Die Welt. However, Yerli did not provide any indication of an impending acquisition and mentioned that Crytek is also considering an initial public offering.In my opinion, the original Far Cry was one of the most underrated shooters of its time, for me it was by far the best single-player shooter, even when compared to other giants like Half-Life 2.

I have to wonder if such an acquisition would be a good thing for gamers or not since big development houses can sometimes focus more on commercialization of its products than actual game quality. Crytek is reportedly spending $20 million in the development of its new game.